Let's bitch about our stupid, annoying co-workers

and my entreaties for more background info went unmet

I'd just make sure I CCed my boss into all such entreaties so as to cover my arse

not co-workers, but a fucking CLIENT.

when we train call centers, we always give our clients the ability to call in and "test" the representatives knowledge. We also do our own internal testing. This is done using a controlled environment, with scripts, and specific answers we are looking for. The testing comes at the end of training, and is one way of measuring the readiness of teh representatives.

As a result, we always tell our contacts not to ad lib, because that kills the 'controlled' environment, and makes calibrating the results more difficult. In addition, sometimes they throw out a question that would not be confusing in a real life environment, but that would be in a controlled test environment (example forthcoming)...or they ask an invalid question that the representative couldn't realistically find the answer to.

We had our first round last week, and it went well, so I was expected similar success, as the training went very well. Within minutes of today's client session starting, though, it was clear that something was amiss. One of the client contacts went completely off book and started asking "trick" questions about other services that this call center didn't handle (and the correct answer was presumably to offer to transfer the call to the right place). Now, in real life, those representatives would know to transfer that call or give them the correct number to call. But since it was a test environment, they all thought that it was a REAL LIFE call that got misrouted, since they weren't supposed to be getting calls like that, so they all got confused as to what to do.

In addition, one of the callers asked a question that I had specifically omitted from the question bank because there was no possible way for the representatives to answer it as the test software didn't have the necessary information in the test environment...and there was also a tool we were building for our representatives that wasn't done yet. If I'd known they planned to ask this question, I could have put together a 'temporary' means of getting the info to them, but when they went rogue, obviously I couldn't.

One caller adlibbed a question that we don't have the answer to because THEY NEVER FUCKING GAVE THE INFORMATION TO US (and it's not something we should be expected to know ANYWAY).

I don't know if this was their attempt at playing "gotcha", to ask 'off' questions to see if we were truly ready, but if so, this is NOT the way to do it. Now they pretty much rattled the representatives unnecessarily, and made it impossible to truly assess the individual reps since they sabotaged the calls.

I was so angry I left before the 'feedback' came in because I was raging too much and was afraid I'd say something nonprofessional. Any 'negative' feedback would be a joke -- how can you broadside someone and then turn around and complain about it? And even if they don't, and give us 'weighted' feedback in light of the problems, they've rendered the whole exercise useless. It's no-win either way.

Frustrating as it was a great training class and I enjoyed teaching them, and hate that it has to end on a sour note.

Basically it was this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=NYgrHQVBWb0#t=463s

I THINK THERE'S BEEN A RAPE UP THERE

love that Office episode lol

Ugh, my boss has asked me to send out a generic sales email to a bunch of existing and potential advertisers. I hate becoming a spammer.

If someone is going to send out an email announce the death of a coworker's parent, maybe compose a subject line like, "Death of Bob Smith, Court Reporter Jill Smith's Father" AND NOT "Death of Court Reporter Jill Smith Father Bob Smith." (sic)

While I'm at it, my boss is notorious for projecting his Irish Catholicness on to everyone around, ie just presuming that all white people are Irish Catholic (and all people who aren't white are Catholic and wish they were Irish). So I'm eating leftovers at my desk and let's not even get into how annoying it is for him to decide this is a great time to come over and talk to me about work, but anyway, the leftovers consist of braised kale, roasted potatoes, and roasted chicken. He looks at my food and says, "Oh, you've got a little corned beef and cabbage leftover from St. Patrick's day!"

Is this guy actually Irish or is he American?

That's not how (Irish-)Americans think....

LOL yeah, he is an American of Irish descent living in Chicago, which is kind of a whole different thing than being from Ireland or being American and of Irish descent somewhere else (except probably Boston).

That's part of what's so damned irritating about it. He's at least third, maybe fourth generation American. And statistically, white people in Chicago are more likely to be Polish than Irish. But he looks at the world through giant, green, shamrock-shaped novelty sunglasses.

Plastic Paddy.

I'm American but I grew up around Irish immigrants, so this is irritating....although it's usually someone who never had a living Irish relative that acts this way.

We barely celebrate St. Patrick's Day in my family. Not that we hate it or something.

I am getting dumped on again just because I have experience with something that my co-workers don't. However, it is not in my job description. Fortunately for them, I am more than happy to do it for the experience and personal enrichment...however I am not being compensated for it. It's just that it keeps happening...I talked to my boss about it a long time ago and she said it wouldn't happen again, and then it does.

Tell them that you're too busy to doing your actual job to do this thing that in no way helps you. They'll soon find someone else to do it when they realise that you aren't. Though I guess you've done that already, right?

does anyone ever get compensated extra for using skills not directly mentioned in their job description?

My job description is so vague it could encompass anything, I basically take it to mean "do what you're told unless it's a daft idea, occasionally think up some ideas of your own for other people to dismiss as daft"

NotEnough, the thing is, I love doing it and it does help me. If it doesn't get done, it won't get done. It is not my boss or my office mates, it is a management problem. They need to create a new position to do this job and they won't or don't have the funds, so they use people like me who only had college coursework in this area (I have minimal professional experience in this area). So, it's like, I have to take a chill pill and do it.

The thing is, it's against official policy to have people like me doing this particular task, which is supposed to be done by a professional.

We have one printer between about sixty people. It's a nuisance to have to wait for documents sometimes but it's generally ok as long as people are vaguely considerate.

We've had someone hot-desking with us recently who spent this morning running off 15 copies of an 800-page document. Leaving aside the fact that it'll probably end up costing us about two grand, who does that at 10am in the morning?

She's printed off half a dozen novels as well and hasn't bothered to go and collect them. I can just about accept that if you work for a publisher you might need to read e-books occasionally (even rapey Twilight fanfic, apparently) but print them overnight when other people aren't actually in the office. Or get a Kindle!

OMG is the document for work? Otherwise wait until the end of the work day. With that level of work, outsource that stuff or you need a print department!

Nothing worse than feeling like the office rat, you end up feeling petty. But that is so rude!

Yes, i think it's work-related but we have people they can outsource things to and the printers can be set up to run overnight!

I can't even begin to full articulate this complaint without putting more details than I'm comfortable with on line and also boring you all with the minutia of my boring job, but suffice it to say, I cannot compete a time sensitive task because of utter incompetence/laziness at four different points along this particular file's journey.

It's also going to make me look bad in the end because the powers that be track things by raw numbers with no ability (or understanding) of the nuances of those raw numbers.

OMG people who collect stuff "for future use" and then...let it sit there. Which just so happens to be part of my job as a support staffer - file the crap that will be used later.

The problem is we also have co-workers like ShariVari has, and the files become so enormous that we don't have room! I own ONE filing cabinet...and it has to be accessible to my boss, so it can't be crammed with nonsensical documents.

The backlog got so bad I boxed up the ephemeral shit and took it home, where it sits in boxes in my basement (with the tacit permission of my boss, who is not amused by hoarding behavior). I figure if they need the documents in the future, I'll bring them in.

Also, people who make five copies of something trivial when at most you need two copies.

That's so weird that your boss let you take them home. It seems like it should be your boss's responsibility to 1) find a place to put these documents; or 2) instruct people on what to save. I mean, what happens if your basement floods or there's a fire?

just presuming that all white people are Irish Catholic (and all people who aren't white are Catholic and wish they were Irish

denial imo, denial and envy

but print them overnight when other people aren't actually in the office.

Not really feasible unless someone's willing to hang around overnight adding paper and toner to the machine. But office printers really aren't made to handle 12,000 page output jobs. This should have gone to a copy shop, where they'd probably do it for $500-600... $1000 tops.

xpost to carl - they're like book and CD reviews and stuff that one could find in an electronic database or even on the web. The only reason we keep paper copies is because we write notes on them and it's easier to send a photocopy to another department than to e-mail pdf's. Plus web pages and even electronic databases get updated or deleted.

WmC, that is true, you can't print an 800-page novel overnight unless you have a large machine! But it's not my business how large someone's copier is.

However, I have often stayed past 5 when I need to print off some large documents (not 800 pages, though).

800 pages isn't THAT huge a print job.

Not for Kinko's or a print department certainly...

Maybe I overwork our all-in-one machine (Konica Bizhub 350) but we regularly do multi-hundred page print jobs without a problem and we're just a small firm (5 people in the office).

lol just started thinking "we're just an unfrozen caveman law firm....."

We've had someone hot-desking with us recently who spent this morning running off 15 copies of an 800-page document.

How about 12,000?

Oh, now 800 x 15 is a big deal.

I would be blowing a fucking gasket if that happened in my office. I would have blown a fucking gasket even when I worked at a quick-copy shop and that happened without alerting everyone else who relied on that machine.

The firm I work for has two offices and the support staff works mostly in our other, small-town office and that support staff is largely incompetent.

One of the legal assistants/secretary refuses to CC partners re major cases unless she is very explicitly instructed to do so, even though every week she is instructed to *ALWAYS* err on the side of inclusion.

One of our clients is being sued in a class action and today we discovered that she hadn't been emailing copies of court papers to the partner who is responsible for the case. She was only emailing the president of the firm, who is an airhead and didn't notice the omission.

Her excuse today: "Well sometimes when I CC him, he asks me "What is this for?"

This isn't even the dummy who sends out bizarre, tpyo-ridden, dada emails. She's the "good" one.

Her excuse today: "Well sometimes when I CC him, he asks me "What is this for?"

tbf, this would make me un-cc somebody pretty fuckin sharpish

When our attorneys are out of the office, they prefer the secretaries to email them phone messages and they hate voice mail b/c it could sit there all day, but emails are instant. The "good" secretary said to me, condescendingly, "Jesse. I'm not going to tell them, 'NO, I'm not going to let you leave a voice mail.'"

Apparently she only knows how to say "Okay," or treat a caller like shit.

xp - But the thing is, the only reason he has to ask that is b/c she didn't say in her email "The attached is ____, which we received from ____." She will just send a document w/ no explanation of why anyone might care. OF COURSE he's going to ask "WTF is this random thing you sent me?"

as always, life is more complex than we had first thought -_-

Yeh, I mean the context here is that she's infamous for being kind of bullheaded.

just for instance, gimme a ballpark figure of what these ppl earn, i wanna compare

Who? The Bad People? I honestly don't know, but I'm guessing ~$38K, which would be not too bad for their positions where they live. Especially in their job market. That's a guess though.

yeah i suppose i'd need to take local issues into account for a true comparison, i mean i could buy the house i live in atm for 90k tbf

why are fuckers completely unable to stop fucking coughing on a conference call? it's been three fucking weeks ffs.

If I was on a conference call for three weeks, I'd probably start coughing, too.

On mute unless you're talking is standard on telecon's, no? Coughing through it is some stupid annoying co-worker shit.

I'm patient for chronic coughers (one colleague has asthma...I swear it never annoys me but others have complained about it). You can, however, excuse yourself to get a drink of water. Unless you have a really authoritarian boss.

Someone is lighting matches in the bathroom, which makes it smell like burned hair. But then again, if something is bad enough to warrant lighting a match, perhaps that smell is better than the alternative.

I do wish someone hadn't pooped on the toilet set in the fourth stall on the right.

why are fuckers completely unable to stop fucking coughing on a conference call?

i might have said this before, but on really boring conference calls I have opened up a sound search engine online and played random sounds (lion roaring, horror movie screams, plane crashes) into the phone during the really dull bits when everyone talks at once. makes them all shut up

Hahaha I wish I had the balls to do that.

I hate when people drop by at 8:00 AM just because they happened to see me arrive early! We have a semi-flexible schedule - we can use the office as long as the building is open (7 AM-7 PM). Official hours are 9-5, though. I hate when people drop by at 8:00 AM just because they saw me arrive at work early!